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I stand in the kitchen without make up, and my wet hair twisted tight in a towel-turbin, while I fling frozen waffles from freezer to toaster, 6 at a time. My coffee sits cooling on the counter, half drunk, while the scrambled eggs plump in the pan.
The kids scatter between the kitchen and family room and it’s all noise and knees and elbows everywhere I look. Someone’s sitting on someone else’s back and the one pinned to the floor bellows for me to “heeeeelp!” It’s full-on chaos and I’m impatient for the breakfast to be served and the littles to be still. Just for a minute.
My baby wanders in, and looks up at my unmade face, she grins wide and tells me how pretty I look, and I shake my head at this declaration, at this gift of generous words on a morning where I feel more harried and messy than beautiful. But I’ll count this as gift because a Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones. (Proverbs 16:24)
My mama bones are weary from wake-up and though I feel less than, my baby builds me up, and I know that when I child her age says something, it’s not platitudes of mercy. Children of 3 don’t say things to make you feel better, they speak straight from the heart–from the head, sharing their thoughts without the filter of common courtesy.
My journal bulges with gifts counted, the ones that have come in the middle of the hard moments of a messy day, the ones slipped quietly, mysteriously into my inbox, or by my front door. The unexpected gifts of a free coffee, in exchange for a long wait, or a moment of sunshine after weeks of gloomy overcast days. The gifts are all shapes and sizes and some have been dug up from the depths of woe, still crusted with a bit of dirt, caked on hard by tears spilled during the unearthing.
What I know after all this counting is that God is wildly good, and when we choose to see Him, to see His goodness, to count it all gift, we find treasure in the unexpected, and we gain life–we bloom.
“And when I give thanks for the seemingly microscopic, I make a place for God to grow within me.” Ann Voskamp, 1000 Gifts
I missed a lot of glory before I discovered this truth, but I’m determined now, not to close my eyes. Not to blink too long in the shadow of dissatisfaction but instead to run out into the rain, to embrace the moments of grace as they come, to feast on the eucahristeo of life, because it is in thanksgiving that we discover true living.
Eucharisteo—thanksgiving—always precedes the miracle. Ann Voskamp
Today, with Mother’s day around the bend, I’m giving away one copy of Ann’s book, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
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Leave a comment about how your Momma has blessed you to enter for a chance to win.
While you won’t have the book in time for Mothers day, it will make a mighty fine surprise gift on a rainy day.
. There’s no good excuse for it, except that I simply hadn’t heard of her, until I got a copy of her book, Bittersweet, in my swag bag at Allume last year. (To all of my friends who knew of her goodness and did not share her with me, I hold you fully responsible for my ignorance–just so you know)
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